gorann

I remeber often seeing "star lost" or "star mass changed" (whatever that means), but I cannot remember “No guide stars detected”. In any case I find that the Mesu will do its job until PhD finds it again.

I agree, nice dust and rarely seen outer swirls. Excellent!

Excellent result of an unusual object from what sound like a heroic enterprise Steve!

Looks great Dave so you can with good conscience move on to your next project!

Since I am clouded in I could not stop myself from playing with your image in PS. Only did two things: a dose of NoiseXT and then tweaking the blue curve on a starless image (StarXT) to suppress the blue cast. I hope you do not mind. However, more data would improve it since I noticed that any further stretch brought out quite a lot of noise. CS, Göran

Looks very promising and a bit more processing may be what is needed. I see a blue cast here and there and especially between the main galaxies that maybe should not be there. Maybe also try another does of NoiseXT?

That is a very impressive image and rarely seen in such a wide field! Congratulations! I love the processing.

Quite a nice image but is not this (blue bloating) what you would theoretically expect from a doublet compared to a triplet apo?

I noticed that you live in Norway, like I do much of the time. On finn.no you can now and then find some fine telecopes at good prices. Right now there is this carbon fibre Stellarvue 90 mm APO svr90t triplet for sale at 16 000 NOK = 1150 GBP. https://www.finn.no/bap/forsale/ad.html?finnkode=326603842 I do not know the seller and have never owned one of those but it looks like a very good deal to me for a top of the line telescope that you may never want to sell even if you later buy a bigger one. Maybe someone here knows more about that telescope model can comment on it.

I fully agree with stunning, spectacular and fabulous! Probably the deepest cocoon images I have seen. Cheers Göran

For a while I have been running a rig with two RASA8 and a piggybacking Samyang 135. All are at F/2 and the cool thing with the Samyang (FL 135) is the extreme wide field. But when if comes to both resolution and catching the faint stuff, the Samyang is nowhere near the RASA. The simple reason is aperture: 67.5 mm (Samyang) versus 200 mm (RASA). So there is no doubt in my mind that aperture rules when it comes to resolution and depth, as long as both instruments do not get limited by seeing or guiding. This may be an extreme comparison and the difference between a 6" and 8" SCT may not be so clear, but I assume it will be there.

Here is my version. All done in PS except BlurXT (default setting except I used 0.15 "Sharpen stars") and a dose of SCNRgreen at the end, both done in PI. In PS I stretched the image a bit, then run StarXT, and continued to stretch the starless image. I got rid of most of the green with Gradient XTerminator. Tweaked the colour curves a bit to suppress some blue casts. Gave it a dose of Noise XT near the end and increased contrast with the HiPass filter. Yes, more integration time would help but I did not see much mottle. Cheers, Göran

SCNR usually works well for getting rid of green, but not always. On some images it creates ugly blue casts on dark patches of sky. In those cases I skip SCNR and try playing with the green curve to suppress it in parts of the histogram. But I do that in PS, where I do all my stretching, but I assume something similar can be done PI. The mottled background you have could be real but NR may have made it look odd. Try processing it without NR to see what it looks like. Like @ollypenrice I would never even think about applying any NR before I know what the image looks like (so after a fair amount of stretching) and I can se what the NR does to it (and I have the possibility to use it selectively).

I either use my OSCs (ASI2600MC) with IDAS NBZ(Ha+Oiii) or without filter (so RGB, the camera has a built in UV/IR cut). However, I am curious how you process the data if you use both Ha+Oiii and Sii+Oiii filters. Do you make separate images or mix them somehow, like putting the red channel from Sii+Oiii data into the green channel of the image?

Very few of us have the luxury of living close to a major astro-dealer so we have to rely on having everything shipped. It has worked well for more than the dozen scopes I have bought from dealers so far. As David indicate, one should be slightly worried if buying from a private person that may make packing mistakes.

The image is already in an excellent shape! Will be interesting to see if 20 hours will make much of a difference.

Thanks a lot Chris!

The area just north of NGC 7000 is a complex mix of Ha emitting nebulosity covered by a network of dark nebulae and a few bright reflection nebulae. The area is not that often imaged, maybe because there are no major iconic objects there, but certainly there is a lot going on. The absolute brightness of the area is quite weak, but not difficult to catch at f/2 after several hours of integration. The bright patch of nebulosity at the southern border of the image is the northern tip of NGC 7000, aka The North America Nebula. I have not suppressed the blinding brightness of NGC 7000 to give an indication of the relative difference in brightness between these areas of nebulosity. This is a two-panel mosaic with about 50% overlap from my Samyang 135 piggybacking on my dual-RASA rig. I planned the mosaic for the RASAs and the little Samyang had to get what it got (hence the big overlap). Omegon veTEC571C with NBZ (Ha+Oiii) filter. 213 x 5 min, so nearly 18 hours @f/2. Processed in PI and PS including the XTerminator tools. Yesterday I posted what the RASAs caught, which is in the central part of the Samyang image: Cheers, Göran

Impressed! Looks very promising. Maybe you need to blacken it all too. Keep us posted.

Thanks a lot Dave! Those are my darlings too😉

This is a two-panel mosaic of a rather rarely image area in Cygnus, a bit north of NGC7000. It contains a nice mix of red Ha-emitting nebulosity, dark nebulae and blue reflection nebulae. I imaged it over two recent nights with my dual-RASA8 rig with NBZ filter (Ha+Oiii) on one of the scopes and without filter on the other. I then essentially mixed the data 50:50, so this is a HaOiiiRGB image. Total integration time was about 36 hours. Given that it is a f/2 system and I gave it a decent integration time the image is quite deep and show more dust and colours than any image I have seen of this area. While processing I noticed a small PN like structure. It is identified by the Astrobin platesolve as PK091+01.1 but it is registered as PN G091.6+01.8 in Simbad. Surprisingly I cannot find it on https://planetarynebulae.net/. I have not been able to find any other images of it so I thought it could be worth posting a crop even if a RASA has really a too short focal length for imaging small PNs. Cheers, Göran

Really outstanding Wim! I know you had to fight to find openings between clouds for this one. Very few know about it or seen an image of it, and no one has seen it llke this before. Cheers Göran

Great! I would be very pleased with that first light. The Samyang is just such a great little light bucket, and like Olly I never stop it down.

Great image Olly! You captured a striking large patch of dark nebulosity just above (and partly on top of) the Soul that I think is seldom seen (at least I have not seen it as clear as this). Maybe only a RASA would reveal that😆. If you add some panels to the right you will also catch that big SNR (https://www.astrobin.com/u17lx0/C/) but then you probably need NB.

I just had a comment on my previous post that I should soon have covered all of Cygnus. Not so, much remain but I covered a part of it and just put together this mosaic. This is a two-panel Samyang 135 mosaic to which I have added about 50% RASA8 data to four of the more busy areas. There are quite a few supernova remnants in the image, some of which are rarely imaged (and unfortunately not annotated by Astrobin annotation attached). Most of the SNRs are revealed by their blue (Oiii) nebulosity, which I have here selectively stretched since they would otherwise be drowned in the Ha and starfield. You can see close ups of some of the SNRs in my recent images here and on Astrobin, where I also give some info on the objects. Totally about 40 hours at f/2, so quite deep.